How To Balance Your Home Care Franchise Brand While Standing Out in Your Local Market

• Hone in on your story and competitive differentiators 
• Lean in on the voice of your customers 
• Invest in technology

Hone in on your story and competitive differentiators.

Many home care agencies, even across franchises offer the same core services: companionship, personal care, etc. 

What makes you different across your franchise is your personal story, your family’s reasons for wanting a home-based care business, and the driving forces that help you find the best caregivers in your market. 

Take some time to outline what your story looks like in comparison to your competitors, and position yourself in a way that is competitive or addresses alternative points, like family caregiving experience, any experience in healthcare, or demonstrating expertise in service-based industries like restaurants, security, and more. 

It doesn’t have to be an essay, but make it stand out to prospective families who are reading your website and looking at your materials. Here are a few examples we’ve seen that are compelling yet brief: 

• “Remarkable Caregivers. Lifted Spirits.” This tagline speaks specifically to what families care about with a positive twist on what care does to help individuals maintain independence. Tagline from Tribute Home Care.
• “Tender Rose provides expert, one-on-one care at home, exclusively for people with dementia.” This tagline speaks to a specific audience of family members seeking care for a loved one with dementia, honing in on the 1-to-1 caregiver ratio. Tagline from Tender Rose Dementia Care Specialists.

These one-sentence stories capture the essence of a brand without detracting from brand guidelines set by your home care franchise. 

Lean in on the voice of your customers.

What your competitors don’t have are your customers! When you send out Google review requests, it’s not just an opportunity for them to sing your praises, but to also share how the general public talks about your services. 

Pay careful attention to the words that they use. Home care industry language can be fairly vague and tough to understand, especially when they’ve never done this before. 

By adopting the language of your consumers in inquiry calls, your website content, etc… you can better appeal to a wider audience instead of isolating them because they don’t understand. 

For example: in-home assessments. 

The word assessment can sound intimidating, but it’s also vague. It doesn’t share any specific information as to what this entails or how to prepare. Instead, you can call it a care plan build.

This sounds more down-to-earth and easy to understand while setting expectations for what will happen in the home. 

Invest in technology.

One of the most important investments you can make in your home care business, especially as a franchise, is technology.

There are many different applications of technology that you can use in home care, like:

• Caregiver recruiting and applicant tracking 
• Caregiver training and engagement platforms 
• Remote patient monitoring (a huge potential service add-on)
• Data and analytics 

In addition to these, using an agency management system that’s built to scale and grow with a home care franchise business is critical to your success. The usability for caregivers is essential for maintaining compliance and relaying important care notes and changes in condition. Depending on how you use all of the features, your home care software can also act as a lever to reassure families that you’re transparent, honest, and provide high-quality service. 

If you’re in the market for a new system to operate your home care agencies on, be sure to ensure that it was built with caregivers at the center. 

For example, CareTime V3 is the latest update of our agency management system, complete with:

• Easy functionality to manage multiple payers and manage billing while you sleep
• A unique scheduling user interface that’s easy for your schedulers and caregivers to understand
• Robust reporting that helps you understand where your business opportunities and challenges are

The use of technology also helps to make your job easier. AI for one, has saved employees an average of 1.75 hours a day, according to Human Resources Director. What could 1.75 hours a day back do for you? 

Dr. Malik of America A Care, shared that with CareTime, he fulfills his agency’s promise of 110% client satisfaction. With the admin time savings, he’s now able to immediately tend to client and caregiver concerns. Learn more about his story here.

Your home care brand can be a part of a franchise while standing out.

It’s an exciting adventure with added peace of mind as a home care franchise, but you probably want to see what you can do to make yourself different. That can be done through your story, by listening to customers, and through the technology you use. 

Jonah Sachs, a renowned author and storytelling expert once said, “Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points.” The process of unfolding starts from the moment you opened your business doors and began talking to clients and their families. 

Rather than thinking of your brand only created by you, it’s joined by all of your clients, referral sources, family members, and caregivers. It’s the collective impression and perception of your business. Make that stand out.